On Matthew 5:13

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision.  The Introduction to this writing can be found here, for the uninitiated.

Last we met, we were wrapping up a broad-aperture study of paganism as context for the life of Jesus Christ.  Today, we're going to start immediately with our gospel reading.  The next few verses require more digestion than many of the ones that have preceded them, so we're going to take them very slowly and with special focus.

Let's get started, shall we?

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Matthew 5:13

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

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Matthew 5:13 through Matthew 5:16 are known collectively as "The Similes of Salt and Light."  Whereas the preceding Beatitudes were relatively easy to interpret and extract moral data from, these similes are marginally more cryptic.  Here in 5:13, we read the Simile of Salt, which is entirely encapsulated within one verse.

Jesus tells his disciples, who are still listening to him by the Mount of Beatitudes, that they are the "salt of the earth."  He then poses an odd question regarding the value of salt which has lost its flavor.  "If salt goes bad, what can you fix it with?" he asks.  He immediately answers himself by saying "you can't fix salt that's gone bad.  If it goes bad, it's only worth throwing on the ground and walking on."*

Traditional interpretations of this verse are somewhat dependent on the immediately subsequent verses.  As you will see over the next few weeks, the Similes of Salt and Light are most easily interpreted as instruction regarding the relative place of the disciples in the world at large.

If the Similes of Salt and Light are the answer, then the question would have been something like "Jesus: should your teachings and our adherence to them be secret, or public?"  In 5:13, Jesus responds to the hypothetical question by saying "you who follow my teaching are the most valuable commodity around!  The whole world needs to hear you!  But if you stop following my teachings, you'll return to a state of near valuelessness."

According to traditional interpretation, with which I agree, Jesus is telling his followers that they are necessary and welcome in the world as long as they are living by his teaching.

Interesting to note here is that Jesus seems to describe something that cannot actually happen.  Salt requires nothing to flavor it, and it cannot be washed of its saltiness.  It tastes salty even in its purest form.  If salt didn't taste like salt, it would no longer be salt.  Some scholars believe that Jesus understood salt as such, and meant to tell his followers that, just as salt cannot be washed of saltiness, his followers would not be able to be washed of their spiritual gifts.

We should note, too, that here in Matt 5:13 Jesus is coining a phrase that still has meaning in today's modern world.  The use of the phrase "salt of the earth" to describe character attributes of humans originates with Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew.  Today, "salt of the earth" is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a very good and honest person or group of people."  Next time you hear someone use the phrase, you can let them know that they're using a Jesus Christ original.

So, "why is salt the chosen metaphor?" you might ask.  The answer is fairly obvious when one takes a look at the value of salt in the ancient world, which we will do now.

In the ancient world, salt was an absolute necessity for many people.  The primary tool of food preservation in ancient times was salt.  For those cultures that depended on being able to stockpile meat for consumption at a later date (read: most ancient cultures), salt was as important as the nourishing meat itself.  Butchered meat would commonly be dehydrated with salt, which eliminated the potential growth of microbes that cause food spoilage.  Once properly dried by the salt, meat could be stored for consumption months later.

Salt was also highly valued in the ancient world for its flavoring properties.  Before we had access to monosodium glutamate, Frank's Red Hot, and genetically modified super-peppers, humanity wanted badly for ways to make food more palatable.  Salt filled that void.  Whether for curing meat or for flavoring it, salt would have been a staple in any kitchen "worth its salt."

Speaking of things being "worth their salt," we can further highlight the importance of salt in the ancient world by tracing the term "worth one's salt" back to its origins.  In ancient times, Roman legionaries would often be paid a special stipend, along with their regular pay, which was explicitly for the purchase of salt.  Remember: salt was critical for the preservation of meat, and the preservation of meat was critical for ancient travel.  And just what were the legionaries constantly doing?  That's right.  Travelling.  The salt stipend was known as the "salarium," from which we get the English word "salary."  To be "worth one's salt," then, means to be worth one's wages, or to be an effective worker.**

Another common and important use for salt in ancient times, and one Jesus surely would have been keenly aware of, was its use in religious practice.  Most of the pagan world appears to have utilized salt in various rituals, especially during sacrifice.  Salt was so valuable that, in some cases, the mineral itself could be offered up to the gods as a sacrifice.

During his travels in Egypt in the fifth century BC, Herodotus of Halicarnassus noted the following ritual use of salt during the celebration of the Feast of Lamps in the city of Sais:

At Sais, when the assembly takes place for the sacrifices, there is one night on which the inhabitants all burn a multitude of lights in the open air round their houses. They use lamps in the shape of flat saucers filled with a mixture of oil and salt, on the top of which the wick floats. These burn the whole night, and give to the festival the name of the Feast of Lamps.

The addition of salt to the lamp oil likely made the flame brighter.  Other sources tell us that salt would be caked onto lamp wicks in the ancient world, also to increase brightness.

We would be remiss if we didn't look at the utility of salt specifically in ancient Judaism.  In Leviticus Chapter 2, we learn about Moses' laws on "grain offerings."  Chapter 2 says that, in addition to meat, a Jew could offer grain as sacrifice.  The text then proceeds to describe exactly how grain might be offered.  It says that the person offering the grain is to spread oil and frankincense on it before giving it to the priests at the Temple.  The priests are to then burn a handful of the grain on the altar; the burnt handful is God's portion.  The rest of the offering becomes the property of the priests.***

Chapter 2 of Leviticus goes on to say the following:

13 You shall season all your grain offerings with salt.  Do not let the salt of the covenant with your God be lacking from your grain offering.  On every offering you shall offer salt.

Even today, in many Jewish homes, the bread shared during the Shabbat dinner will be sprinkled with salt, or dipped in salt, before it is consumed.  This tradition comes directly from Leviticus Chapter 2.

For the ancient Jews, salt was also necessary for the preparation of a blood sacrifice.  Our old friend Josephus tells us about this in his Antiquities of the Jews, Book 3.  He says:

226 Suppose a private man offer a burnt offering, he must slay either a bull, a lamb, or a kid of the goats, and the two latter of the first year, though of bulls he is permitted to sacrifice those of a greater age; but all burnt offerings are to be of males.  When they are killed, the priests sprinkle the blood around the altar; (227) they then cleanse the bodies, and divide them into parts, and salt them with salt, and lay them upon the altar... 

Whether the offering was of grain or flesh, it is clear that salt was an important component in any Jewish ritual sacrifice.

To reiterate our original point, it is clear that salt had nearly unlimited value in the whole of the ancient world, and that Jesus thought of his followers as valuable in a similar way.  Jesus called his followers the "salt of the earth" rather than the "frankincense of the earth," or the "cedar wood of the earth," or anything else, because salt was more universally important than almost any other commonly traded commodity of the time.  Jesus chose salt as his metaphor because it was universally valuable, and specifically valuable to the Jews, who constituted all of Jesus' early followers.

There is some ambiguity built into this verse.  Ultimately, its meaning is subjective and will continue to be interpreted subjectively.  What we can say for sure is this: in Matthew 5:13, Jesus tells his followers that they are of great importance.  "The salt of the earth."

That's enough of this saltiness.  Next time, we'll have more similes to unpack.  Until then, please share this writing.  Thank you for reading.

Love.
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* If the part about being "trampled underfoot" confuses you, think about the modern use of salt on slick surfaces to increase foot traction.  Ancients used salt in the exact same way, on occasion.

** The phrase "worth one's salt" is not actually recorded anywhere until the around the 19th century AD.

*** Seems kinda like a scam....

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If this is your first time to this gospel study, you may want to check out the Introduction, which can be found here.

I should apologize for not publishing anything last week.  I am sorry to have left my audience waiting two weeks for this posting.  I have a reasonable excuse in that I was out of my home state visiting family in Texas.  Making it more reasonable is the fact that, during the trip, I proposed marriage to the love of my life.  Thankfully, despite my many, many glaring flaws, she accepted my proposal.

Seriously, though, thank you for your patience in this and every regard.  Let me not delay today's writing any further.

Last time we met, we discussed some of the basic mechanics of Greco-Roman paganism.  That discussion was prompted by our need to further understand the religious world that Jesus Christ grew up in, which was influenced from all sides by pagan cultures.  It's time, now, to wrap up our mini-study on the pagan context of the first century.  Today, we're going to look at some of the specific similarities between the pagan world-view and the Biblical Jewish worldview.  After that, of course, we'll have our regularly scheduled gospel selection.

Happy reading.

Similarities Between Ancient Judaism and Paganism

For a little over two-thousand years, Christians and Jews alike have portrayed Judaism as being a thing totally separate from the old pagan religions.  The difference between Jew and Gentile, to hear some tell it, was like the difference between black and white.

Like so much of what is portrayed as truth about these faiths, the idea that Judaism and paganism were totally different is totally wrong.  An objective look at early Judaism shows a faith that is remarkably similar in its mechanics to all of the paganisms that surrounded the ancient Israelites.  In fact, I venture to say that an extraterrestrial intelligence, looking objectively at ancient Judaism side by side with any one of the paganisms, would assume that the two were just localized variations of the exact same religion.

We'll wind down this study now with four critical points of similarity between ancient Judaism and paganism.

1.  Both Jews and pagans had a priestly class.

When I was growing up, I wasn't aware that there were "priests" outside of the Catholic faith.  For whatever reason, I never learned, in my early years, that priesthood had pre-dated Christianity.  I guess I remember being taught, or somehow inferring, that all clerical works had originated with Jesus.  It seemed as if Jesus Christ himself had presented to his apostles the org-chart of the Catholic Church.

Of course, I know now that Jesus didn't do anything of the sort.  He offered no organizational chart, and he condoned no human authority.  I know now that the concept of "priesthood" predated Jesus, as the Jews had had a hereditary line of priests since Aaron, the first High Priest of the people Israel.  I am further aware that Jewish priesthood predated even Aaron, and that pagan priesthood predated the earliest Jewish priests.

The Egyptians had established priesthoods in the sixth millennium BC.  We know this from archaeological evidence of organized animal sacrifice dated as early as 5500 BC in Egypt.  Priests existed in extreme antiquity in Mesopotamia, too. In ancient Sumeria, around 2300 BC, there lived a priestess called Enheduana whose writings have survived until now.  Enheduana is known as the world's first poet, and predated the Israelites by centuries at least.  She wrote the "Sumerian Temple Hymns" and various devotions to her patron Goddess Inanna.  The priestly administration of the cult of Inanna may have dated back another thousand years or so from Enheduana.  Pagans had priests millenia before the story of the Israelites began.

Interestingly, priests even existed among the Israelites before the Torah was handed down to Moses on Sinai.  That is to say that there were priests among the Israelites before they had received the basic tenets of their faith.  In Exodus, immediately before establishing the Aaronic priesthood, God mentions other Israelite priests to Moses.  He tells Moses "Go down and come up along with Aaron.  But do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord."  

When we consider that the office of "priest" existed in the pagan religions of the Sumerians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and that priesthood in general predated Jewish cosmology by a long-shot, we come to understand that Jewish priesthood was borrowed from, or was an evolution of, older pagan traditions.

The office of "priest" is not a Christian, nor even Jewish, invention.

2. Both Jews and pagans had methods of divination.

As we learned last time, the Greeks and the Romans both had ancient methods of divination.  The Romans would read bird livers or the patterns of bird flight, and the Greeks would visit an Oracle who spoke in tongues.  We can find other kinds of divination in almost any ancient pagan tradition. Most ancient people, it would seem, had some form of divine "Magic 8-Ball" to which they could turn for godly answers.

The ancient Jews were no different from the pagans here, either.  

The Old Testament describes what are known as the Urim and Thummim, or two engraved, sacred stones.  The Urim and Thummim were to be kept with the High Priest, on his breastplate, and could be consulted for divination.  This system, like the Sacred Chickens that we learned about last time, was binary.  The priest would ask a question, and then blindly reach into a pouch which contained both stones.  The answer to the question would be understood based on which stone was blindly grabbed.  It's like flipping a coin, asking God to determine the outcome, and then believing that God did determine the outcome.

Any modern Christian who scoffs at practices like augury or auspicy would do well to remember the Urim and Thummim that existed in their own ancient mother-faith.  The mother-faith, as we are beginning to see, was not that different from that of the pagans.

3.  Both Jews and pagans worshipped at temples which housed gods.

The Temple of Jerusalem (including both Solomon's Temple and the Second Temple) was, to the ancient Jews, the literal earthly housing for God.  God was understood to reside in the most sacred part of the Temple, the Holy of Holies.  The concept of a grand edifice being used to contain a god was not originated with the Temple of Solomon, however.  Pagan cultures the world over had, by the time of Solomon, been building temples to house divine beings for upwards of 10,000 years.  

Egyptians, Sumerians, Minoans and others had all developed varying types of temple architecture for worship prior to the advent of the Jewish faith.  Most pagan temples, just like the Jewish Temple, contained a particularly sacred area within that could only be entered by a member of the priesthood.  Most pagan temples were constructed for the benefit of a single local god as opposed to multiple gods, even though the people that worshipped at said temples would have believed in a whole pantheon.  Most pagan temples also had at least one altar on which to perform ritual blood sacrifices, just like the Jewish Temple did.

I find it suspicious that Yahweh, the "One True God," would arrive on the scene and basically request the same treatment that the "false" pagan gods had been receiving for millennia.  "Build me a Temple like those other gods have," Yahweh seems to have told the Israelites.

Suspicious.

4.  Both Jews and pagans appealed to the divine by the mechanism of blood sacrifice.

The Old Testament is full of blood sacrifices to God.  In scripture, Abraham, before he was even named "Abraham," can be seen slaughtering a heifer, a goat, a ram, a turtledove and a pigeon for his new-found God.  The Bible gives us the sense that sacrifice was something that Abraham's people were already very familiar with by the time of God's revelation to Abraham.

From the time of Abraham, blood sacrifices continued to be offered by the Jewish people until 70 AD.  In year 70, as we've mentioned again and again, Rome knocked the Second Temple down.  Since the Torah says that blood sacrifices may only be performed at the Temple, blood sacrifice stopped with the temple's destruction, and, according to tradition, cannot resume until a Third Temple is built in Jerusalem.

The sacrifice of blood to a god was, like the temple itself, not an idea that originated with the Jews.

Again, Yahweh seems to arrive on the scene covetous of what the pagan Gods have been receiving for millennia before him.  He seems to say "I want you to spill blood on an altar in or near a gigantic beautiful building for me, just the way your ancestors used to spill blood for their various gods in Mesopotamia, and just the way the Egyptians spill blood for their gods in their temples.  Truly, those pagans treat their gods well."

Why does the "One True God" demand what the masses of false gods had always received, rather than some alternative?

If Judaism was totally new and totally different from the paganisms that predated it, why did it so closely follow the pattern of those paganisms?

How were the pagans, without having the benefit of Yahweh's instruction, able to develop systems that were so close to the one the Jews ended up with by Yahweh's command?

Sorry about the rhetorical questions.  I just want to make sure you're with me on this as we wrap this up.

The similarities between the cosmology of the pagans and the cosmology of the ancient Israelites were numerous and not at all superficial.  The way history reads, it is almost as if blood sacrifice by a priestly class at a temple is some kind of natural law, and that Jewish cosmology was nothing more than a refinement of that law.  

I conclude that the religion Jesus Christ practiced all his life can, in a way, be seen less as Judaism 1.0 and more as Paganism 2.0.  It is critical to the rest of our studies to understand just how closely related these ancient thought systems were.  With that, we'll retire this line of questioning.

Now, back to the Gospel.

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Matthew 5:11 through Matthew 5:12

11 Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you [falsely] because of me.

12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven. Thus they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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The list of what are traditionally called "The Beatitudes" ended last time in Matthew 5:10.  Today, we have what is known unofficially as the "Ninth Beatitude."  Recall that these Beatitudes mark the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, which is the first specific teaching that Jesus offers his disciples aside from "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

As far a moral data, these Beatitudes have been a boon to us already.  We've learned in the other Beatitudes that Jesus prefers the poor, the meek, the merciful, the peaceful, and the persecuted.  In the Ninth Beatitude, Jesus doubles down on his aforementioned preference for the persecuted.

Let's notice a couple of things about this reading.  First of all, Jesus doesn't say "if," he says "when."

"...When they insult you and persecute you..."  he says.

So, Jesus expects his disciples to be persecuted, insulted, and to have "every kind of evil" spoken of them.  We can infer, then, that he expects his followers to publicly buck some cultural mores, and to no small extent.  Otherwise, how would they ever find themselves persecuted?

Let's also take note of who Jesus is talking about when he says "they" in 5:10.  Does he mean the Jews?  Does he mean the Jewish authorities - the priests and aristocrats?  Does he mean the Roman occupying force?  We get a clue in 5:12.  He says that his followers will be persecuted in the same manner as were the prophets before them.  Looking back at the Old Testament, we can see that the prophets were mostly persecuted by those with great power.  Elijah, Amos, Micaiah, Hanani, Uriah and other prophets all faced retribution or persecution at the hands of some powerful human authority, either a High Priest or a monarch.

So, 5:11 and 5:12 show us that Jesus expects his followers to be persecuted by High Priests, monarchs, aristocrats, or other powerful humans.  There is no reason to think that Jesus is speaking in metaphor or parable here.  He truly seems to have expected this.

Now let's follow Jesus' expectation one step further with a question: why would High Priests, monarchs, or aristocrats want to persecute a person?

For our answer, we need only look at all of human history.  All of human history teaches us that the wealthy and powerful, as a rule, persecute anything that threatens their wealth and power.

So...

Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of his Galilean Ministry, is telling his followers that he expects them to threaten the power of the powerful.  He expects his followers to loudly undermine the status quo by default.  We've made no logical leap of faith here, and we've missed no secret meaning.  Today's reading shows unequivocally that Jesus intended for his followers to be revolutionaries.

This week, let's meditate on the many ways we can, in accordance with the teaching of Jesus Christ, threaten the power of human power.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:10

Welcome to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, a sprawling, exhaustive, and comprehensive gospel study.  If you are new to this study, you can start from the beginning by clicking here.

Last week, we were hanging out with a man, one part monster and one part Roman military mastermind, named Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.  We discussed Pompey's approach to Jerusalem in 63 BC, his siege of the city, and his siege of the holy citadel within.  We discussed the piety of the Jewish priests during that siege, who continued to do their priestly Temple duties even as Pompey's troops approached them to cut them down from behind.  This was all in the context of a study of ancient paganism and its interplay with ancient Judaism.

At first glance, Pompey might not be the most pertinent figure when we look at the historic space between paganism and Judaism.  The Jews had, after all, descended from pagans*, and the Old Testament is chock full of stories of the Jewish people interacting with pagans of all sorts.  There is also no doubt that the exile of the Jewish people to the pagan Babylon in the sixth century BC qualifies as one of the most powerful collisions between paganism and Judaism ever - enough to rival anything Rome ever did to the Jews.

So why the focus on Pompey and Rome?  Because of their proximity to Jesus, of course.  When Jesus grew up in the Galilee, Rome was the ultimate earthly authority in that area.  When a Galilean said "damn The Man," they were referring to Rome.  The immense cultural pressure Rome brought to bear on her subjects would have been palpable to Jesus and the whole population of Palestine at the time.

Still, we should understand that when Rome arrived in full force in 63, Palestine was already a thoroughly Hellenized place.  The people there had been familiar with Greek traditions and religion since, at the latest, Alexander the Great's conquest of the area in 332 BC.**  Pompey was, by no means, the first pagan to walk into Jerusalem.  He was merely the most powerful pagan to date to have ever stepped foot in the city.

Bearing the gradual Hellenization of the entire Mediterranean world in mind, today we'll continue our study by simply highlighting some of the main practical aspects of Greco-Roman religious belief.

Ten Broad Strokes on Greco-Roman Paganism

1. Greek and Roman pagan practices differed very little.

We call it "Greco-Roman" paganism because, in many ways, Roman and Greek paganisms were indistinguishable.  This statement is true for a vast majority of Greco-Roman history, and it is especially true of the first century BC.  At that time, in Roman towns and Greek towns alike, cult and temple worship of patron gods was the norm.  In Roman towns and Greek towns alike, religion was a transactional thing, wherein the adherent made continuing blood sacrifices to the gods in return for rewards here in this earthly life.  In Roman and Greek towns all over the Mediterranean and the near-east, religion looked pretty much the same.

The religion of the Greeks and the religion of the Romans can be separated from one another, but, for our purposes, Greco-Roman paganism can be viewed as a monolith.

2.  Greco-Roman paganism was not a system of morality, unlike the major modern religions.  

Greco-Roman paganism did not come with prescriptions for morality, generally.  The gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans were themselves, by tradition, often morally reprehensible, and thus there was no imperative set for human behavior by the gods. For Greco-Roman pagans like Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus or Pontius Pilate, religion was strictly a system by which one appealed to the gods for favors in this earthly life.

This is not to say that the Romans or Greeks were without morality.  They certainly were not.  Their morality was just based on things like civic duty, personal honor, and the politics of war, rather than on duty to the divine.

We can say for sure that Pompey never once laid awake in bed thinking "I really hope Jupiter will forgive me for telling that lie I told earlier today."

Speaking of Jupiter...

3.  Jupiter = Zeus 

Jupiter was the King of the Gods in the Roman pantheon.  He was analogous to Zeus in the Greek pantheon.  Maybe "analogous" doesn't go far enough, though.  You see, the name "Jupiter" is a cognate of the Greek "Zeû páter," or "Zeus, father."  The prime Roman god, then, is literally the prime Greek god by a translated name.

One can actually take any name off the list of the primary Roman pantheon and find the mythological prototype of that character in the Greek pantheon.  The Greek Ares became the Roman Mars.  The Greek Poseidon became the Roman Neptune.  The Greek Aphrodite became the Roman Venus.  The two pantheons can almost be seen as a single pantheon of double-named deities.

4.  The Romans interfaced with the gods through birds and gore.

The Romans had various methods of divination***.  They engaged in practices such as haruspicy and augury.

Haruspicy is an ancient practice that the Romans had picked up from their Italian neighbors the Etruscans.  It involved the inspection of the entrails of a sacrificed animal, most commonly the liver of a bird, for divine signs of the future.  There is archaeological record of statues of bird livers used as reference for liver-readers on the Italian peninsula.

Augury was the practice of observing the flight patterns or other behavioral habits of living birds, interpreting them as messages from the gods.

There's an interesting story about Roman augury that I like to retell.  You see, before initiating battles, Romans had a religious requirement to appeal to the gods for approval through augury.  A Roman commander would have with him in the field, or on his ship, a cage full of "sacred chickens."  When the Roman commander wanted approval from the gods for a battle, he would open up the chicken cage and spread some seed on the ground before it.  If the chickens came out to eat the seed, this was considered "good auspices" and the battle would go forward.  If the chickens did not eat the seed, it was considered a bad omen - a message from the gods that the battle should not be initiated.

During the First Punic War, a man named Publius Claudius Pulcher led the Roman naval forces into the Battle of Drepana against defiant Carthaginian blockade runners.  Before ordering his men into the fray, Pulcher was said to have opened up his cage of sacred chickens and ceremoniously thrown some delicious seed on the deck before them.  The chickens, on that day, may have been somewhat seasick, as evidenced by the fact that they did not leave the cage to eat the seed.  Pulcher, being unwilling to delay the battle on that particular day on account of the chickens, famously remarked "if the chickens won't eat, then let them drink!" and threw the whole lot of chickens overboard into the Mediterranean.  Pulcher's men, no doubt, looked on in horror.  It would have been considered terrible luck to defy the sacred chickens, much less to kill them all in a fit of anger.

Pulcher ordered his fleet to commence attacking the Carthaginians despite the inauspicious chicken reading, and was rewarded for his haste by having 93 of his ships captured or destroyed.  The sacred chickens had been right, and no one who heard this tale dared doubt the chickens for generations to come.

5.  The Greeks interfaced with the gods via Oracles.

The Greeks also had methods of divination.  Most famously, the Greeks heard oracles.  Most famously, the Greeks heard the wisdom of the Oracle at Delphi, also known as the Pythia.

The Pythia was a position held by one woman at a time.  She was one in a line of female seers, and was certainly the most powerful woman in the classical world.  Greek leaders appealed to her wisdom in all manner of inquiry for ages, and her influence is multiply attested in nigh countless ancient authors.  The Oracle at Delphi was established in the eighth century BC and was still used as late as the fourth century AD.

Located a hundred miles west and slightly north of Athens, the Oracle was the place to go for Greeks seeking to interface with the divine.  Generally speaking, at the Oracle, a seeker could pose a question to the gods and receive some kind of divine answer via the Pythia.

Some historians say that the Pythia, upon being asked a question, would inhale fumes coming out of a natural vapor spring.  The fumes would cause her to start speaking an unintelligible gibberish.  The Oracle priests would then interpret the gibberish into an answer in plain Greek for the seeker.  Other historians recall the Pythia intelligibly answering the seeker herself, in Greek.

Some of the most pivotal decisions in Greek history were essentially made by the Pythia, whoever she was at that time.

If the Romans wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could cut open an animal and look at its liver.  If the Greeks wanted to know if something was a good idea, they could go talk to a woman who had possibly driven herself mad with natural inhalants.

Different strokes.

6.  Greco-Roman paganism was tolerant of alternative religiosity.

Greco-Roman paganism, as we've mentioned before, was very tolerant of the religious views of other peoples.  This is probably because most peoples of the ancient Mediterranean world worshipped a non-moralizing pantheon of gods transactionally, just as the Greeks and Romans did.  When Alexander the Great went conquering, then, it was not a big deal for the newly conquered people to mix and match their existing gods with the new Greek gods.  When Rome conquered, it was the same thing.  Pantheons might get added together, and the names of some gods might change here or there, but the overarching structure of pagan religion was the same everywhere.

7.  The pagans originated the belief in an everlasting soul.

Greco-Roman pagans believed in an eternal soul.  Attitudes and beliefs about the afterlife evolved throughout antiquity, but eventually landed on something close to an afterlife-as-punishment-or-reward model.  A person who lived well and was remembered well would be rewarded by pleasure in a place called Elysium.  A person who lived impiously or was remembered poorly by others would have to, at least for a time, experience some measure of suffering in a dark place known as Tartarus.  Again, "good" and "bad" living were not defined by religion here, but were concepts rooted in civic duty and social order.

One can see the origins of the Christian concepts of Heaven and Hell in the Greco-Roman concepts of Elysium and Tartarus.  (One cannot, incidentally, find the origins of these concepts in Biblical Judaism.)

8.  They worshipped and sacrificed publicly at temples.

The temple was the center of public religious life for the Greco-Roman pagan.  Any Greco-Roman town of any importance had at least one temple, if not more.  Most towns would also have other smaller shrines where people could pray and sacrifice.  Most temples were associated with some divine or revered grave.  The space a Greco-Roman temple occupied was more sacred than the edifice itself, and thus the centerpiece of the temple, the sacrificing altar, was frequently located in the open air directly in front of the temple.  This also facilitated participation in ceremony by the locals.

9.  They worshipped and sacrificed privately in their homes.

The center of private religious life for the average citizen of Greece or Rome was the home.  Citizens would create shrines to patron gods in their homes and would personally burn small offerings there on a daily basis.  The patriarch of a family was the default advocate to the divine in any household, and it would have been his responsibility to see these reverences completed for the earthly benefit of his flesh and blood.

10.  Transactional, not salvational

I've said it before, but it gets its own bullet-point here: Greco-Roman religion was transactional in nature, not salvational.  Greco-Roman paganism was "practical and contractual."  The old Roman idiom was "do ut des," or "I give, that you might give."

One practiced paganism because one wanted to increase one's bounty in this life.

---

There you have them. Ten broad strokes about the religious atmosphere that the Jewish people found themselves surrounded by at the time of Jesus Christ's Galilean Ministry.

Next time, we'll look at ancient Judaism broadly in this same way, seeking to find the starkest differences and the clearest similarities between it paganism.  Some of you might be surprised at what we find.  Don't miss it.

For now, let's get back to the gospel.

------------------------------

Matthew 5:10

10 Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

------------------------------

Here we have the eighth and final Beatitude as Matthew records them.

The original Greek word that we have translated into "persecuted" here is "dediōgmenoi" which is a prolonged and more intense form of the verb used to mean "pursue."  I think "persecuted" is a pretty good translation here.

The verb "to persecute," today, means "to subject (someone) to hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of their race or political or religious beliefs."

The original Greek word that we have translated into "righteousness" here is "dikaiosynēs," meaning fairness, equitability, justice, or even levelness.

For me, it is next to impossible to read this Beatitude without thinking about the mechanisms of power and empire as they existed in Jesus' time and as they exist now in modern times.  

Jesus assures his followers that those who labor for equality and fairness to the point that the authorities begin to harass, harm, or expel them are extremely blessed, and will be the rightful heirs of the "kingdom of heaven."

Those familiar with Christ's whole story know him as a political radical.  This verse shows Jesus, from the very outset, encouraging political radicalism in his followers, too.  Jesus tells his followers that they ought to expect to be persecuted for their mode of living.  In fact, in this Beatitude, Jesus offers his people a yardstick by which to measure themselves.  He seems to say "if you aren't being persecuted, you probably aren't advocating loudly enough for righteousness or justice."

Jesus wants his followers to be persecuted for the radical methods by which they advocate for righteousness.  

For a modern example of the persecution Jesus refers to here, consider the establishment's persecution and murder of Martin Luther King Jr for his work in civil rights, his advocacy for the poor, and especially for his work in the anti-war movement in the 1950s and 60s.  Here was a man very clearly "persecuted for the sake of righteousness."

Coincidentally, I will say that there are only a few figures in the history of Christendom that I now find worthy of the title "Christian."  Dr. King is one on that very short list.  I like to guess that the good Doctor took a lot of solace in this eighth Beatitude throughout the trials of his life.

For Jesus and for Dr. King: damn The Man.

Join us next time, and thanks for reading.

Love.

-------------------------

* Joshua 24:2

** It was during the Hellenizing period between 332 and 63 BC that the Jews first adopted some of the beliefs of the Greek philosophers, like that of the "immortal soul," which did not exist anywhere in the Jewish scriptures.

*** divination: noun - the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means.

-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:9

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  If you are unfamiliar with the nature of our study, you may become familiar by starting at the Introduction, which can be found here.

As you'll recall, we've got a few irons in the fire right now.  First of all, our reading of the Gospel has brought us to the Beatitudes, or "great blessings," which we have been reading and digesting slowly over a couple of months.  Second, we're in the middle of an open-ended study of paganism and its interplay with Judaism in the first century BC.  Third, within the context of that study, we're in the middle of recounting the tale of Rome's conquest of Judea in 63 BC.

That's a lot.  You'll forgive me for dismissing with pleasantries and superfluous language.  Let's get back into this.

Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem

or...

The Sullying of the Holy of Holies

Part II

Last week, we left Aristobulus and his loyal priests besieged inside the Temple in Jerusalem.  The priests inside have just been duped by the people of Jerusalem, who are on the side of Hyrcanus (Aristobulus' brother) and Aretas, the Arabian king in command of the forces besieging the Temple.

We also left off, in Josephus' Antiquities, with our attention turned to the north, where Pompey has just gotten done mopping up various military forces during the course of a very successful campaign in what is now Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.

Pompey began to send men south, and Hyrcanus' and Aristobulus' were both informed of the Romans' advancing.  They both sent envoys to greet Pompey's scout, Scaurus.  Through Scaurus, both of the warring brothers appealed for Pompey's help.  Josephus says they both offered money in the amount of "four hundred talents" for Pompey's favor, and that Pompey decided to help Aristobulus "for he was rich, and had a great soul, and desired to obtain nothing but what was moderate."  It is worth mentioning Josephus' obvious favor of Aristobulus.

What did Aristobulus' four hundred talents afford him?  In exchange for the four hundred talents Aristobulus offered, Pompey sent messengers to Aretas, ordering him and his forces to "depart, or else he would be declared an enemy to the Romans."

Aretas was no dummy, and he knew that his men would be outclassed, outgeared, and outnumbered by Pompey's men.  He immediately began to withdraw his forces, at which juncture Aristobulus' cobbled together an army and gave chase.  Here's how Josephus tells it in Antiquities:

So Scaurus returned to Damascus again; and Aristobulus, with a great army, made war with Aretas and Hyrcanus, and fought them at a place called Papyron, and beat them in battle, and killed about six thousand of the enemy, with whom fell Phalion also, the brother of Antipater.

(It is not entirely clear, by Josephus' account, where Aristobulus got the military forces with which he pursued Hyrcanus and Aretas.)

At this time, Pompey finishes up his business in the north and finally heads to Damascus himself.  As he travels, he lets everyone in the region know that he wants to personally settle any ongoing regional disputes, starting in the spring.  His substantial army was just being mobilized again after winter.

Hearing that Pompey intended to settle regional disputes, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both sent ambassadors to Pompey's court in Damascus.  Along with the brothers' ambassadors, there also arrived members of a non-aligned Jewish community, which appealed to Pompey against both Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.  

Let's see this ancient court in Josephus' ancient words:

...there it was that he heard the causes of the Jews, and of their governors Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who were at difference one with another, as also of the nation against them both, which did not desire to be under kingly government, because the form of government they received from their forefathers was that of subjection to the priests of that God whom they worshiped; and [they complained], that though these two were the posterity of priests, yet did they seek to change the government of their nation to another form, in order to enslave them.

This sounds like a complicated case for Pompey to parse through.

"Aristobulus should be in charge!  He's smartest!"

"No, Hyrcanus should be in charge!  He's the oldest son, and his mother left it to him."

"No, neither of them should be in charge!  The priests, and the priests alone, should be in charge."

"But wait... don't Aristobulus and Hyrcanus both descend from priestly blood?"

"Rabble, rabble, rabble!"

I wonder how Pompey felt about all of this.  Not wanting to make a hasty decision, he scolded Aristobulus for his violent and wild ways.  He told the brothers to delay their warring, and that his judgement would not be made until he himself came down into Judea.

Aristobulus did not apparently take Pompey's words all that seriously, and turned his forces back into Judea to continue tearing up the countryside.  When Pompey got word of Aristobulus' behavior, he was angered and began marching a massive military force south toward Judea.

Aristobulus' forces holed up in a fortress on a mountain called Alexandrium, and when Pompey's army approached, he summoned Aristobulus down to discuss the controversy with his brother.  Aristobulus', seeing that he had little choice, came down from the mountain and disputed for a while with his brother about the right to be king.  Then, Pompey let Aristobulus return to his fortress.  Again, in short order, Pompey summoned Aristobulus down for a meeting, and again he went down, talked, and returned to the fortress.  Aristobulus did this, according to Josephus, two or three times, all the while keeping his forces ready for battle in case Pompey decided to rule against him.

Finally, Pompey made a kind of a decision.  He told Aristobulus to give up the fortress on Alexandrium, and to order all the governors in the region who were loyal to him to give up their fortresses as well.  Aristobulus, despite his preparations for war, decided to obey and gave up the fortresses.

If Pompey thought he was done here, though, he was mistaken.*  Aristobulus, angry that he'd had to cede his fortresses, retired to Jerusalem with his forces.  Pompey advanced to Jericho after him.  From Jericho, Pompey leaned in on Jerusalem, and Aristobulus sent word to Pompey that he was sorry for his warlike ways, and that he would give Pompey money and receive him into Jerusalem freely for Pompey's forgiveness.  Wanting to act prudently, Pompey agreed to this and sent his men to receive the money and enter Jerusalem.

The Roman general was enraged when his men returned saying that Aristobulus' men would not let them into the city, nor pay the agreed upon sum.  Pompey immediately had Aristobulus arrested and imprisoned, and prepared to lay siege to the city.

The city was well defended by a wall, but a rebellious faction inside the city allowed Pompey's men in.  Pompey's men took control of Jerusalem and the royal palace, and struggled only when it came to securing the Temple itself, which lay surrounded by a massive defensive trench.

The ancient Roman historian Cassius Dio records the situation thus, in his Roman History:

...by shutting up Aristobulus in a certain place he compelled him to come to terms, and when he would surrender neither the money nor the garrison, he threw him into chains. After this he more easily overcame the rest, but had trouble in besieging Jerusalem. Most of the city, to be sure, he took without any trouble, as he was received by the party of Hyrcanus; but the temple itself, which the other party had occupied, he captured only with difficulty.

The ancient Roman historian Strabo describes the trench surrounding the Temple thus, in his Geography:

Pompey went over and overthrew them and rased their fortifications, and in particular took Jerusalem itself by force; for it was a rocky and well-watered fortress; and though well supplied with water inside, its outside territory was wholly without water;
and it had a trench cut in rock, sixty feet in depth and two hundred and sixty feet in breadth; and, from the stone that had been hewn out, the wall of the temple was fenced with towers.

At this point, all of Aristobulus' supporters end up behind the Temple walls, just as they were when Aretas besieged the city not long before.  Hyrcanus' offers every help he can to Pompey, as Pompey moves his camp inside of Jerusalem and right outside the Temple on its north side.  The city is once again overrun with foreign soldiers.  It is a first-century Jew's worst nightmare on repeat.

The detail with which Josephus describes this is exquisite, so we'll let him keep describing it, from Antiquities:

...even on that side there were great towers, and a ditch had been dug, and a deep valley circled it, for on the parts toward the city were precipices, and the bridge on which Pompey had gotten in was broken down.  However, a bank was raised, day by day, with a great deal of labor, while the Romans cut down materials for it from the places around.  And when this bank was sufficiently raised, and the ditch filled up, though but poorly, by reason of its immense depth, he brought his mechanical engines and battering rams from Tyre, and placing them on the bank, he battered the Temple with the stones that were thrown against it.

The next thing Josephus says here is multiply attested in our sources from this time.  He next relays the means by which Pompey was able to breach the Temple walls in 63 AD - probably one of the most interesting points of this whole ordeal.

As Josephus tells us, the Temple was surrounded by a deep valley, directly behind which were multiple guard towers and a heavy wall.  In ancient times, the siege of a walled and towered area surrounded by a deep valley was perhaps one of the most difficult military procedures.  In order to breach the wall, one must get ladders or, more preferably, siege works of some kind, right up to the wall.  In order to get a ladder to the wall, multiple men would have to attempt to bridge the valley with heavy wooden equipment, and then carry more heavy wooden equipment over that bridge while soldiers shot projectiles of many varieties down on their heads at a constant clip from above.  As long as the forces behind the wall had food, water, and rocks, such a wall was likely to remain impenetrable.

Pompey the Great had made an observation of the Jews early on in all this.  He observed that the Jews were extremely religious, and that they observed as part of their religion a day of rest every seventh day.  Pompey noted that the Jews defending the Temple were certainly allowed to defend themselves if they were attacked on their Sabbath, but that they were not allowed to initiate any attack of any kind on that day.  This allotted Pompey a rare opportunity.  Pompey ordered his men to keep up the projectile attack on the Temple steadily, Sunday through Friday.  Then, on the Jewish Sabbath, Pompey's men would stop their attack of the Temple and would focus all of their efforts filling in the valley that surrounded it.  Since it was the Jewish day of rest, the Romans could work all day on their bridges and structures without a single arrow or rock falling on them.  Aristobulus' loyal men watched in horror on several successive Saturdays as Pompey's engineers and workers filled the valley in with a massive wooden structure that would support all of his siege works from Tyre.

Here's how Josephus tells it:

And had it not been our practice, from the days of our forefathers, to rest on the seventh day, this bank could never have been perfected, by reason of the opposition the Jews would have made; for though our law gives us leave then to defend ourselves against those that begin to fight with us and assault us, yet does it not permit us to meddle with our enemies while they do nothing else.

Strabo says "Pompey seized the city, it is said, after watching for the day of fasting, when the Judaeans were abstaining from all work; he filled up the trench and threw ladders across it."

Cassius Dio continues in his History:

For [the Temple] was on high ground and was fortified by a wall of its own, and if they had continued defending it on all days alike, he could not have got possession of it. As it was, they made an excavation of what are called the days of Saturn, and by doing no work at all on those days afforded the Romans an opportunity in this interval to batter down the wall. The latter, on learning of this superstitious awe of theirs, made no serious attempts the rest of the time, but on those days, when they came round in succession, assaulted most vigorously.

Pompey is memorable during this time, I think, for his thoughtful meticulousness.  He lets time work to his advantage whenever he needs to.  He seems, to me, a patient man.

So now we come to the climax.

Josephus tells us that, as the fall of the Temple became imminent, the priests inside continued their daily sacrifices as if nothing was wrong.  No matter what casualty the priests suffered, they continued their steadfast observance of their tradition.  Josephus says that, as the siege works arrived and did their damage, the largest of the Temple's defense towers was shaken and collapsed.  The collapsing tower destroyed a swath of the Temple's wall, at which point Pompey's men "poured in rapidly."  Finally, on a Sabbath day during the consulship of Gaius Antonius and Marcus Tullius Cicero, Josephus tells us that:

...the enemy fell upon [the priests], and cut the throats of those that were in the Temple; yet could not those that offered the sacrifices be compelled to run away, neither by the fear they were in of their own lives, nor by the number that were already killed, as thinking it better to suffer whatever came upon them, at their very altars, than to omit anything that their laws required of them.

The priests steadfastly continued with their prayers and Temple works as they heard the screams of the dying in the background, and the horrifying sound of Roman foot soldiers approaching them by the dozen or perhaps hundred.

Heads began to litter the Temple floor as Pompey's men exacted harsh discipline on those who opposed the power of Rome.  We can imagine the priests at their altars, perhaps still plunging knives into sacrificial animals, as Roman soldiers approach them from behind, plunging swords into their backs.

What a bloody scene.

"But now all was full of slaughter," Josephus says.

And then...

...Pompey entered the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies was the inner-sanctum of the Temple.  It was the room that was said to house the God of the people Israel.  Only the High Priest was allowed into the Holy of Holies, and even he was only allowed to enter that space on one day out of the year.  The Holy of Holies was shrouded by a large veil that extended from floor to ceiling.  To this day, some Jewish people will not walk in a large portion of the city of Jerusalem, to make sure that they do not accidentally step foot in the spot that used to be this Holy of Holies.

With a veritable river of blood pooling at his feet, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus shocked the entire Jewish world by piercing the veil of the Holy of Holies with his gladius and entering that sacred place in 63 BC.

The collective Jewish heart must have cried out in agony at this moment.  Indeed, Josephus recounts some of the Jews committing suicide rather than face this ongoing Roman insult to God's people.

Josephus says:

...No small enormities were committed around the temple itself, which, in former ages, had been inaccessible and seen by none; for Pompey went into it, and not a few of those that were with him also, and saw all that which it was unlawful for any other men to see but only for the high priests.  There were in that Temple the golden table, the holy candlestick, and the pouring vessels, and a great quantity of spices; and besides these there were among the treasures two-thousand talents of sacred money; yet did Pompey touch nothing of all this, on account of his regard to religion; and in this point also he acted in a manner that was worthy of his virtue.

Amazing.  The general enters the room, as if merely to ensure that Roman eyes had seen all that could be seen, and then simply leaves the room unmolested.

Cicero, in his speech For Flaccus, also notes that “...Gnaeus Pompeius, after he had taken Jerusalem, though he was a conqueror, touched nothing which was in that temple.”  Because of the multiple attestation, we can be fairly certain that this story of Pompey's conduct inside the Temple is true.

In subsequent days, Pompey had his men clean the temple while he bestowed the High Priesthood on Hyrcanus.  He forced the Jews to give up lands that they had not long before gained from Syria, and brought Judea totally under control.  In short order, a steep fee of over ten-thousand talents was exacted from Jerusalem, and Pompey disappeared into the Palestinian sunset almost as swiftly as he had arrived, leaving Roman delegates governing the area.

Josephus lays the blame for the subjugation of Judea squarely on the two brothers:

Now the occasions of this misery which came upon Jerusalem were Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, by raising a rebellion one against the other; for now we lost our liberty, and became subject to the Romans...

The most notable moments of Pompey's life still lay ahead of him, but he had left our region and people of interest forever, and forever changed.

It is true that the Jews had been interacting with pagans of various forms for many centuries, and that Greek paganism had been known all over Palestine for at least a couple of centuries.  It was the arrival of the Romans in 63 BC, however, and the fundamental incompatibility of Jewish theology with Roman paganism, that would eventually lead to the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD by a Rome fed up with a people who would not accept abject rule.

When we think about the intersection of Second Temple Judaism and the pagan world, perhaps we ought to think first of Pompey's bloody footprints tracing themselves in, around, and then out of the Holy of Holies.

Next time, we'll compare Roman pagan practice to Jewish traditions, in detail.  For now, let's get back to our Gospel.

------------------------------

Matthew 5:9

9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.

------------------------------

What kind of weirdo has a favorite Beatitude?

This kind. *points thumbs to self*

Jesus continues doling out mission-critical moral data in the form of his "great blessings."  Today, he blesses "peacemakers" and insists that they will be children of God.

What does Jesus mean by "peacemaker?"  

Well... the original Greek word written here is "eirinopoiós" which can be alternatively translated "loving peace," or "pacific."  

Peace is defined as "freedom from disturbance" or "a period of time without war."

So Jesus, here at the very beginning of his Sermon on the Mount, blesses those who do not cause disturbances and those who do not advocate for or participate in war - those that love peace.

Jesus offers no exception.  He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone like Pompey the Great is knocking at your door, in which case the battle hardened Jewish warrior is actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

He doesn't say "blessed are the peacemakers, unless someone knocks down a couple of buildings with a couple of airplanes, in which case the American military are actually blessed, not the peacemaker."

Jesus blesses the peacemaker, and excludes the warrior and the warmonger alike from blessing.  For perhaps the first time, though certainly not the last, Jesus insists that humankind does not have the authority necessary to make war on itself. 

Jesus says this to us through the Gospel while American Christians consistently vote in support of the world's largest and most dangerous military industrial complex.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Twilight Zone.

You need to share this writing.  Thank you for reading it.

Love.

-------------------------

* I'm sure he didn't.

-------------------------
To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:8

Welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ, the most exhaustive gospel study you'll ever read.  If you'd like to take a look at our mission statement, I'd refer you to the Introduction, which can be found here.

In our last installment, we introduced a study of paganism as context around the life of Jesus.  An understanding of paganism is important to anyone trying to understand Judaism or Christianity, because, in a sense, Judaism was a refined version of paganism, and, of course, Christianity came directly out of the Judaic tradition.

I'll reiterate that "paganism" is a fairly fluid term, and that we are using it perhaps somewhat narrowly here.  We are defining paganism as "ancient polytheistic religions which were transactional in their mode of interface with the divine."  The term "pagan" applies to myriad cultures and myriad specific theologies, many of which we will study individually by the time our work is done.  For now, we're focusing on the paganism of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire.

Today, along those lines, I'd like to introduce you to a Roman whose name will be spoken by historians for as long as human history exists: Pompey the Great.

Without further ado...

Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem

or...

The Sullying of the Holy of Holies

Part I

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, or Pompey for short, led one of the best attested lives of ancient Rome.  He is best known for being a member of the First Triumvirate, along with Marcus Licinius Crassus and one Gaius Julius Caesar.  Pompey's alliance with Crassus and Caesar is what ultimately gained Caesar the authority to go conquesting in Gaul for ten years, which is ultimately what led to the downfall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire*.

As we said, Pompey's life is remarkably well attested, including the years before his alliance with a young man named Caesar and a rich man named Crassus.  That's lucky for us, because today we're focusing in on events that occured just a few years before the First Triumvirate.

In 63 BC, Pompey the Great, without breaking a sweat, made a Roman province of Judea.  We are going to focus in on this pivotal moment in history, for reasons that will become apparent in the context of our study of paganism and of our broader study of the first-century Judeo-Christian world.

Let's start with some background data.  Early in his military career, Pompey fought successful campaigns in North Africa, Spain, and even on the Italian peninsula.  Pompey was the one credited with putting down the rebellion of the escaped slave Spartacus, and of having the Appian Way lined with the crucified bodies of the defeated slave army.  He didn't actually deserve the credit for the crushing of the slave rebellion, however, since Crassus had led several legions against Spartacus for months before Pompey had arrived on the scene.  Pompey took the credit anyway, adding it to his list of victories.

In 66 BC, as he was wrapping up a famed campaign against pirates in the eastern Mediterranean, Pompey was granted sweeping command over the Roman forces that were then engaged in the Third Mithridatic War in what is now Turkey.  Pompey left the sea, relieved one Lucius Licinius Lucullus of his eastern command, and took control of the war.  This was all per the terms of a newly signed law, the "lex Manilia," which was passed because Rome had lost confidence in Lucullus' abilities and/or fidelity.

On the day the lex Manilia was passed, Pompey became the most powerful human on the planet.  He then commanded the vast majority of Roman military forces, both land and sea.  On his way out, Lucullus accused Pompey of being a "vulture," drawing a parallel between Pompey's "victory" over Spartacus and what was his now impending victory over Mithridates.

When Pompey displaced Lucullus at the front of the eastern conflict, he defeated Mithridates VI of Pontus with relative ease.  Mithridates committed suicide upon realizing his defeat.

"I was almost there," Lucullus whines at us through history.

Lucullus' grumbling didn't leave Pompey any worse for the wear.  The general immediately set his sights on Armenia, as the lex Manilia had expanded the purview of the eastern command to include a new offensive against Tigranes the Great of Armenia.

Tigranes easily surrendered to the might of Pompey.  For his surrender, he was allowed to live and to keep the rule of his territory as a paying client of Rome.

After subduing Armenia, Pompey turned back west and waged war against Antiochus I Theos, the king of Commagene.  He subdued Antiochus and made an alliance with him, and then headed back north toward the Caucasus Mountains where he fought Albanians, Iberians, and others, subduing (at least, temporarily) all who opposed him.

When Pompey had the region around the Caucasus Mountains under control, his focus then zeroed in on political instability to his south, which might threaten the longevity of his new conquests.  The land of Syria had been controlled for centuries by the Seleucid Empire, but the Seleucid Empire was in divided tatters in 65 BC, and Pompey was concerned that factionalization in Syria might lead to military action against his newly conquered Armenia.

Further investigation on Pompey's part revealed more discord even further south, in a little place we call Judea.  None of this agreed with Pompey, and he resolved to go south.

We'll now leave Pompey for just a moment to take a closer look at the discord in Judea.

From 76 to 67 BC, Judea was independently ruled by the Hasmonean Queen, Salome Alexandra.  Her husband, Alexander Jannaeus, had died in 76, leaving her the throne.  (History notes that her husband had been diseased from over-drinking.)  Acting upon Jannaeus' advice, upon his death, Alexandra went to Jerusalem and endeared herself to the Pharisees there by granting them some of her regal authority.  This allowed her to maintain her husband's throne and influence for nine years before her death.  When Alexandra, Queen of Judea, died, she left behind two sons: Hyrcanus and Aristobulus.

Josephus describes the sons thusly, in Antiquities of the Jews:

Now, as to these two sons, Hyrcanus was indeed unable to manage public affairs, and delighted rather in a quiet life; but the younger, Aristobulus, was an active and a bold man...

When she died, Alexandra left the throne to Hyrcanus, the oldest son, but Aristobulus immediately made war against his brother until he agreed to cede the throne to him. Perhaps everything would have been ship-shape for the brothers at this point, if not for the nagging of one of Hyrcanus' friends, Antipater.  Antipater whispered in Hyrcanus' ear every day that the throne should have been his, and that Aristobulus was plotting to kill him out of paranoia.  Antipater told Hyrcanus to flee to Arabia to make an alliance with Aretas, a king there.  Hyrcanus obliged, and snuck out of Jerusalem during the night to meet the Arabian king in a place called Petra.

In Petra, Hyrcanus and Antipas begged Aretas to wage war on Aristobulus and to reinstall Hyrcanus as the King of Judea.  In return for their help, the Arabians would receive back several cities that Hyrcanus' father had won from them in battle years before.  Aretas agreed to this proposal, and soon led a force of fifty thousand against Aristobulus' forces.  This was around 67 BC.

Aristobulus suffered an early and crushing defeat in the field against Aretas before retreating to Jerusalem.  He was deeply wounded by the fact that many of his men defected to the side of his brother early on in the conflict.  Aretas' men followed Aristobulus to Jerusalem, and laid siege to the city.  Soon, the only people that remained on the side of Aristobulus were the priests.  Together, they holed up behind the Temple walls as Aretas surrounded them.

As Josephus records it, during the siege on the Temple, the Passover came.  Actually, let's just hear it from Josephus:

While the priests and Aristobulus were besieged, it happened that the feast called Passover was come, at which it is our custom to offer a great number of sacrifices to God; but those that were with Aristobulus wanted sacrifices, and desired that their countrymen without would furnish them with such sacrifices, and assured them they should have as much money for them as they should desire; and when they required them to pay a thousand drachmas for each head of cattle, Aristobulus and the priests willingly undertook to pay for them accordingly.

Can you imagine this sight?  Aretas' occupying army is making a mess of Jerusalem as it lays siege to the Temple.  The citizens of Jerusalem are probably hiding indoors as much as possible, anxious about the troops walking through their city.  Aristobulus' priests are behind the Temple walls worrying about the wrath of God if they don't make the proper sacrifices for Passover in a few days, and the two brothers sit on the edge of their respective seats.

I want to see this movie.

So, the priests shout over the walls at the Jewish civilians.  They say "please, bring us some cows to the wall so we can rope them over for sacrifice on Passover!  We will pay anything.  Yes, even up to one thousand drachmas for one cow!  The sacrifices must be made per our agreements with God!"

The people of Jerusalem respond "ok, we will certainly bring you the necessary animals for the sacrifices.  First, just... throw the drachmas over in a basket, yeah?"

Aristobulus has his men toss the money over.

Hyrcanus' guys pick up the money and walk away, never to return with the sacrificial animals the money was to have purchased.

A bold and sneaky play.

The priests were furious.  We'll go back to Josephus:

...when the priests found they had been cheated, and that the agreements they had made were violated, they prayed to God that he would avenge them on their countrymen.  Nor did he delay that their punishment, but sent a strong and vehement storm of wind, that destroyed the fruits of the whole country, until a modius of wheat was then bought for eleven drachmas.

Amazing.

The very next thing Josephus mentions after this divine storm is Pompey's impending presence in the north, which brings us full circle.  Josephus says:

In the meantime Pompey sent Scaurus into Syria, while he was himself in Armenia, and making war with Tigranes.  

We'll wrap this up for now.  Next time, Pompey, Aristobulus, Hyrcanus, and Aretas all have a date with destiny, in part two of Mr. Magnus Goes to Jerusalem or... The Sullying of the Holy of Holies.

Until then, let's get back to our Beatitudes.

------------------------------

Matthew 5:8

8 Blessed are the clean of heart,
for they will see God.

------------------------------

Today we read the Sixth Beatitude.  Jesus has been telling his followers who he thinks are the most blessed of humanity.  Today in Matthew, Jesus tells his followers that the "clean of heart" are blessed.

What would "cleanliness of heart" have meant to Jesus?  Well, the original Greek word used here is "katharos" which could mean "clean," "clear," or "pure," which may give us some indication.

When I read this Beatitude, it makes me think of Jewish culture, and of the Essenes in particular.  Recall that the Essenes, a sect of Jews that existed during the time of Jesus, were obsessed with ritual purity and cleanliness.  They ritually bathed themselves at least once daily, and undertook severe measures to guarantee the purity of their eating and drinking vessels.  They were obsessed with cleanliness so much so that they could not use the bathroom on their Sabbath day.

Could Jesus be referring to a similar kind of anxiously guarded ritual purity?  If so, how does one purify the heart specifically?  The Essenes understood purification of the body as being accomplished by bathing, but one cannot physically bathe one's heart...

This verse also makes me think of the cleanliness or purity of the bloodline that some Jews sought to maintain by only marrying other Jews.  Generally, I would say that cleanliness and purity were ideals of the ancient Jewish peoples.

Perhaps having a clean or pure heart means to have an undivided heart.  Perhaps a clean heart is simply pure in its ambition.  It's difficult to determine fundamental meaning here.

Next week, we'll read my favorite Beatitude, which is somewhat easier to understand.  Until then, let me know what you think "clean of heart" meant.

Thank you for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.
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* Seriously, like, the most important moment in western history.

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For the index of Christ's words, click here.

On Matthew 5:7

Hello, and welcome back to The Moral Vision of Jesus Christ.  Newbies should visit the Introduction to get a feel for what we're trying to accomplish here.

We're fresh off of a long, perhaps disjointed, series of entries that ultimately focused on the fallibility of the texts of the New Testament.  We didn't argue that the entire New Testament is incorrect, but merely that it couldn't all possibly be taken for granted as "absolutely correct, the word of God."

Before we completely abandon that line of thought, let me try to punctuate it once more: if the texts of the New Testament are not necessarily all one-hundred percent the "word of God," which I believe we have shown adequately, then a faithful person owes every single text of the New Testament the full scrutiny and suspicion that any other ancient historical text would receive, if for no other reason than to try to suss out what is divine in these texts, and what is merely human.

Ok.

Let's change gears to something some of you may find way more interesting.  Today, let's begin an open ended study of the world of paganism as it existed before and during the Apostolic Age.

Here we go.

Paganism: An Introduction

Terms and Context

If you lived in a Roman-controlled city around the time of Jesus' birth - which could have been in what we now call Italy, Spain, France, North Africa, Greece, Turkey or the Near East - you very likely believed that the cosmos, the world, and your life were controlled by the whims of a pantheon of many Graeco-Roman gods.*

Paganism is dryly defined as "a religion other than one of the main world religions, specifically a non-Christian or pre-Christian religion."  Paganism is a broad term, encompassing the faith systems of many peoples from many parts of history.  In function, paganism is a religious system by which adherents attain special favors in real life from myriad unseen divine powers by sacrifices of material value - commonly blood.

Depending on how broadly one defines paganism, nearly every ancient religion across the globe could be considered "pagan."  Key for our understanding is that paganism was not a monolith.  Whether or not a particular religious system might be considered "pagan" is fluid insofar as the definition of the term is fluid.

In the first century, in the Roman Empire's paganism, there were certain deities which had to be worshipped.  For example, sometimes the Emperor himself was considered a living god and a member of the divine pantheon, and would have been worshipped as a matter of law.  Generally speaking, however, as long as adherents to paganism gave lip-service respects to the legally instituted Roman gods, they were allowed to worship whatever other gods they chose.  In this sense, Graeco-Roman paganism could be seen as an extremely inclusive thought system.  The Roman gods did not exclude other gods.  While some pagans focused their worship on particular patron gods rather than actively worshipping an entire pantheon, all pagans still at least believed in the existence of other deities.

To be sure, when Rome entered Palestine, they didn't ask the Jews to abandon their god.  They only insisted that the Jews make room in their belief system for a few Graeco-Roman gods.

Aside from the resistance offered in Palestine, as Hellenism and the Roman Empire spread across the known world during the centuries before Jesus' birth, religious assimilation of newly conquered peoples was generally easy because Graeco-Roman paganism was so much like the paganisms of the peoples they assimilated.

In pagan societies, religious ritual centered around sacrifice at a local temple.  A Graeco-Roman citizen desiring favor from the gods (or a particular god) in 100 BC might take an animal such as a lamb or a bird or a pig to the local temple to have it ritually killed by the temple cultists.  If one didn't have an animal to sacrifice, one could easily buy one from a vendor inside, or in the immediate vicinity, of the temple.  (Here, think about the men Jesus scolds for selling things in The Temple in the gospel.)

After the sacrifice, the animal meat was normally cooked on a big communal fire, and a large portion of it distributed back to the worshippers present for consumption, with only a small portion being totally burned up as sacrifice to the god or gods in question.  In this sense, religious worship in the Graeco-Roman world was somewhat like a barbeque.**

Since there were so many gods, morality didn't necessarily fall under the purview of paganism.  In the modern age, we frequently see religions as morality-systems.  In ancient times, religion was far more transactional than behavioral.  If you wanted to have a good harvest, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  If you wanted your baby to be born healthy, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  If you wanted your battle with the Persians to go well, you needed to make the sacrifice prescribed by the cultists.  The gods didn't generally hand down rules for human behavior or rules governing human interaction.  The gods were interested in the goings on of their own world too much to care how humans acted toward one another.

Sacrificial cult worship existed in the extreme antiquity of Egypt, perhaps thousands of years before Christ's time.  Herodotus, the Greek "father of history" suspected that the most ancient Greeks had gotten their religion from Egyptians.  We know by archaeological evidence that the semitic peoples that predated the Jewish people practiced pagan ritual sacrifice.  Truly, then, paganism predates history.

I frequently think of paganism as predating humanity.

My cat leaves trinkets by her food bowl when the food gets low - some kind of prototypical sacrificial transaction, perhaps...

"We give, that we might receive."

Next time, we'll explore the collision between paganism and Abrahamic monotheism that occured in Palestine only decades before Christ's birth.

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Matthew 5:7

7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.

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Jesus' Saying #11 is Beatitude #5 today in our continued reading.  The Fifth Beatitude constitutes the fifth hard clue we have as to Jesus Christ's morality.

Today, Jesus blesses the merciful among humanity, and promises that they will be shown mercy in the future.

Let's go back to the dictionary:

mercy: noun - compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.

"Compassion or forgiveness."

In a world that values strength through force and the dominion of vengeance above all other things, Jesus' radical doctrine is that the merciful are blessed and justified.  The compassionate and the forgiving are blessed and justified.

Jesus' injunction to forgive our fellow human whatever misdeed they may do to us begins here, I would say.***

As with the other Beatitudes, we can see an opposite side to the coin of this saying.  If the merciful (the compassionate and forgiving) are blessed, then the merciless (the uncompassionate and the unforgiving) are not blessed and are not justified.

Jesus is issuing his moral rule to his followers immediately here in the Sermon on the Mount.  Forgiveness, poverty, meekness, mournfulness, and a desire for justice - all these Jesus elevates as ideals.

We'll soon start a new list to run parallel with our "Sayings of Christ" list.  The new list will be "The Ideals of Christ."  We'll work on that for next time.  In the interim, I will be focusing my inner thoughts on these already revealed ideals: forgiveness, poverty, meekness, mournfulness, and a desire for justice.

If you want to give it a try with me, try focusing on those ideals until next time.

Thank you so much for reading.  Please share this writing.

Love.
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* pantheon: noun - all the gods of a people or religion collectively.

** The math of this kind of sacrifice still doesn't totally work out to me.  "Hey God, I'm giving you this beautiful delicious pig.  Oh wait... nevermind... I'm eating it.  Yum."  It's like giving your pig, and eating it, too.

*** Yes, Jesus makes an injunction that his followers forgive all human transgressions.  No, there will not be any exceptions to this.  Yes, this undermines all of western civilization.

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To read what's next, click here.

To read what came prior to this, click here.

For the index of Christ's words, click here.